The Los Angeles Police Commission is poised to adopt a major shift in the way it judges police shootings, tying an officer's decision to pull the trigger to his actions in the moments leading up to the incident. The rule change, which will be taken up Tuesday, would settle years of debate over whether the commission can make a determination that a shooting violated department policy if the officer created a situation in which deadly force was necessary. Until now, the commission has generally focused on the narrow question of whether an officer faced a deadly threat at the moment he opened fire.

DURHAM, N.C. - North Carolina's environmental regulatory agency is under federal criminal investigation for its handling of a massive toxic coal ash spill into the Dan River near the Virginia border. The U.S. attorney's office in Raleigh issued a subpoena Monday that includes 13 separate requests for documents from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources related to Duke Energy and the spill, which was discovered Feb. 2. Tons of toxic heavy metals from a containment basin spilled into the river.

A spokesman for former U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Monday it would be "inappropriate" for the L.A. county supervisorial candidate to say if she informed the president about an FBI inquiry into her involvement in a 2012 fundraiser for the Obama reelection campaign. Steve Barkan, who is advising Solis' county campaign, said in a statement that she had a “cordial” meeting with the FBI in November 2012 about her role inthe fundraiser at the La Fonda supper club in Los Angeles.

On Nov. 1, 1952, U.S. scientists detonated the first hydrogen bomb over Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific, introducing a powerful new weapon of war and, in the process, atomizing the rocky island. Air Force planes flying through the debris clouds collected small amounts of airborne particles on filter paper and rushed them back to laboratories in Berkeley and Illinois for analysis. In Illinois, a team that included physicist John R. Huizenga analyzed the minute quantities of material on the filters and discovered elements 99 and 100 on the periodic table, named einsteinium and fermium, respectively, after physicists Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi, who had recently died.

WASHINGTON - Nearly half of the officers responsible for maintaining and operating nuclear-armed missiles at a Montana base have been implicated in a widening cheating investigation, a sign of deep cultural and command problems in the nuclear force, the leader of the Air Force said Thursday. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said at a Pentagon news conference that 92 of 190 launch officers at Malmstrom Air Force Base had been suspended because of the investigation into the sharing of answers on a proficiency test last year.

SACRAMENTO -- A federal judge Thursday agreed to hear evidence in the death of a California prison inmate who, while on suicide watch, was pepper sprayed by guards because he refused to remove his hands from his cell door. The inmate relied on a breathing tube, which he removed after being sprayed, and he died some eight hours later in what prison officials initially ruled a potential suicide, corrections reports show. The man's parents have accused prison officials of attempting a cover-up in the case, an allegation California prison officials adamantly deny.

Long Beach police launched a homicide investigation Tuesday after a dead body was found inside a burning motor home. Officers on routine patrol smelled smoke at about 12:15 a.m. and followed it to the motor home in the 500 block of West 17th Street, where they found the dead body, said Marlene Arrona of the Long Beach Police Department. HOMICIDE REPORT: A story for every victim The victim appeared to be an adult., Arrona said. Authorities declined to say whether the person was male or female.

NEW DELHI -- India's Supreme Court on Friday ordered an investigation into charges that village elders in West Bengal state ordered the gang rape of a 20-year-old woman because she had had a relationship with a man from another community. The case has sparked fresh outrage in India, which has seen a staggering number of high-profile cases of sexual violence against women. The high court ordered a district judge in West Bengal's Birbhum district, where the alleged assault occurred Monday, to visit the village and file a report by next week.

Authorities are investigating sexual abuse allegations against a former Alhambra vice principal made by a former student who secretly recorded what she presented as a telephone confrontation with the educator and posted the video on YouTube. The case has generated wide attention because the video went viral, racking up more than 1 million views since last Friday. Andrea Cardosa, 40, resigned from her post at Alhambra High School last Friday, a few hours after the video went live and someone forwarded it to school administrators.

TRENTON, N.J. - A new investigative committee issued subpoenas Thursday for 17 individuals and 3 organizations as it launched a deeper look into the involvement of Gov. Chris Christie's administration in ordering closures that caused a massive September traffic jam on roads leading to the George Washington Bridge. The names on the list weren't immediately released, but they were expected to include Bridget Kelly, Christie's former deputy chief of staff, who weeks before the closures sent an email to a close ally of the governor on the Port Authority, the regional agency that controls the bridge.